Digital Health Trends: Interview with Pharmacist Megan Coder
Key takeaways:
Megan Coder, PharmD, is a digital therapeutics expert who leads efforts on digital health policy change globally.
How digital therapeutics work and their potential benefits are often misunderstood. This is a big barrier for people's comfort in using them.
Digital therapeutics aren’t the same as health and wellness apps. Digital therapeutics have clinical evidence to support their use and are regulated like medical devices.
Digital health is a broad topic that excites many healthcare professionals around the world. Modern technology has opened the door to treatment options that weren’t previously available. Among the many benefits of digital health, healthcare providers can use these new tools to manage health conditions that have limited treatments.
To learn more about digital health, we sat down with Megan Coder, PharmD, to talk about the history of digital health and how it might evolve.
Read on to learn about Megan’s experience with digital health and why she believes it will change healthcare in a positive way.
Meet the expert
Megan is a pharmacist who earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her Masters of Business Administration from the University of Maryland Global Campus. She co-founded the Digital Therapeutics Alliance (DTA) in 2017.
DTA is an international organization that focuses on advancing digital therapeutics. They strive to educate the public, healthcare professionals, and policymakers about its benefits. Megan leads their global policy efforts to help drive changes to healthcare systems.
Are digital health and digital therapeutics the same thing?
No, but they’re related. Digital health is a term that refers to when modern technology is applied to healthcare in some form. It’s an umbrella term that encompasses a lot of tools, devices, and services. Many digital health tools, such as diet and fitness apps, aren’t regulated and have no research about how well they work.
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Digital therapeutics is a more specific subset of digital health. Digital therapeutics can actually help manage or treat a medical condition. An example of a digital therapeutic is EndeavorRx, a video game that can treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
To be considered a digital therapeutic, a product must have clinical evidence to show it’s both safe and effective. These products are held to the same standards as medical devices.
Why digital therapeutics?
Megan has been involved in digital health and digital therapeutics for about a decade now. She said her pharmacy background drove her interest in the field.
“There’s a whole new paradigm of treatment opportunities available to clinicians that’s never been available before,” said Megan. Having the ability to add these new options to existing treatments or medications, she said, sparked her interest early on in her career.
But her biggest passion lies in policy change. She said being able to “make smart decisions that can impact hundreds, if not thousands, of patients” is what she finds the most fulfilling.
Barriers to overcome
Digital therapeutics is the newest area of the digital health field. These treatments still have a ways to go before they become as well-known as a simple pain reliever, like Tylenol (acetaminophen). When asked what the biggest barrier was for digital therapeutics being accepted by the public, Megan responded with a single word: “Understanding.”
And this understanding, she explained, is on everyone’s part. Healthcare providers need to understand how to best apply digital therapeutics in their practices. Policymakers need to understand how to best regulate these treatments. Insurance providers need to understand where they fit with existing treatments and how best to cover them.
And most important, the person using a digital therapeutic device needs to understand how it will help manage their condition. They also need to understand how to use the device so they can get the most benefit from it. Just as a person would ask their provider and pharmacist what they need to know about a medication, they should ask the same about a digital therapeutic device.
Misconceptions about digital therapeutics
A lack of understanding can sometimes cause people to make assumptions. This is also true for digital therapeutics.
According to Megan, it’s common for many people to assume that digital therapeutics are the same as health and wellness apps. People who have had negative experiences with these apps may be hesitant to trust digital therapeutics.
“This is a new category of medicine,” she said. The FDA regulates digital therapeutics using the same standards as traditional devices. In order to be put on the market, they must have evidence to show that they work and are safe to use.
How digital therapeutics have changed
Digital therapeutics have changed a lot in the past few years. A decade ago the term didn’t exist. Megan said the past 5 years have been about defining digital therapeutics — what they are and how they are regulated. Digital therapeutics are also now required to have research to back up claims.
In the last year, Megan said DTA has focused on how to get these treatments covered by insurers. Little by little, insurers are adding digital therapeutics to their formularies. But it takes time. Megan said she’ll keep working to help make these changes happen.
Where digital therapeutics is headed
Megan is excited by where digital therapeutics will go over the next few years. She believes that we’ll start seeing new devices become available for health conditions that don’t have many treatment options.
“I think we’re going to start to see digital therapeutics really filling a need where therapies have never existed before. Or where there have been gaps in care that have never been met before,” said Megan.
She also hopes that digital therapeutics will become more widely accepted by both providers and consumers.
“We don’t call it digital banking. We call it banking,” she said. “It won’t be digital health. It will just be health.”
The bottom line
Digital therapeutics are an emerging area of medicine that’s taken off over the past few years. Digital therapeutics are regulated like other medical devices. They have clinical evidence to support their use. But these tools and devices are still a bit misunderstood by the general public.
As Dr. Megan Coder has discovered during her career, understanding digital therapeutics is the biggest challenge for everyone. This includes healthcare providers, legislators, and the people who would use these treatments. Once people better understand what digital therapeutics are and how they work, we’ll likely see more widespread use of them.
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References
Digital Therapeutics Alliance. (2021). Megan Coder, PharmD, MBA.
Digital Therapeutics Alliance. (2021). Value of DTx - clinicians.
Digital Therapeutics Alliance. (2021). Value of DTx - patients & caregivers.
STAT. (2020). Medicare should break an old rule to let breakthrough digital therapeutics save lives.
Food and Drug Administration. (2020). What is digital health?
